Physical objects and validation of physical objects

ABSTRACT

The present invention relates generally to validating and providing physical objects. In one implementation, a physical object includes a first digital watermark carried thereon. The first digital watermark includes a first plural-bit message representing at least a reduced-bit representation of a biometric corresponding to an authorized bearer of the physical object. The physical object further includes semantic information carried thereon. At least a portion of the semantic information corresponds to the authorized bearer of the physical object. In another implementation, an apparatus is provided to validate physical objects. In some cases the objects include identification documents.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.10/011,129 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,970,573), which are each herebyincorporated by reference. The Ser. No. 10/011,129 application is acontinuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/422,780, filed Nov.18, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,151), which claims the benefit of U.S.Provisional Patent Application No. 60/109,259, filed Nov. 19, 1998. TheSer. No. 09/442,780 application is also a continuation in part of U.S.patent application No. 09/074,034, filed May 6, 1998 (now U.S. Pat. No.6,449,377). The Ser. No. 10/011,129 application is also a continuationin part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/198,022, filed Nov. 23,1998 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,546,112), which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 08/763,847, filed Dec. 4, 1996 (now U.S.Pat. No. 5,841,886), which is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 08/512,993, filed Aug. 9, 1995 (now abandoned).

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the security documents such aspassports, driver's licenses, credit cards, etc. and to systems forproducing and validating such documents.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Many security documents contain a picture of the owner of the document.For example, a driver's license generally includes a picture of thedriver and a passport generally includes a picture of the owner of thepassport. Validation of such documents is performed by comparing theactual physical appearance of the person possessing the document to thepicture on the document. A common counterfeiting technique involvesreplacing the picture on a security document with a picture of someonewho is not the owner of the document.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,886 which will issue Nov. 24, 1998 describes atechnique whereby a digital watermark is included in the picture on asecurity document. The security document contains human readable textthat is related to the data contained in the watermark. The document canbe inserted into a scanner which will read the watermark and theoperator can compare the output of watermark reader to the text toinsure that the person possessing the document is the legitimate owner.

Custom printing systems are available which accept data from multiplesources and which produce documents which are tailored to individualcustomer characteristics or to information concerning an individualcustomer. Such systems can for example produce personalized documentsthat include both fixed information that is on each document that isprinted and variable information such as personal information about anindividual's account at an institution such as a bank. One such systemis commercially marketed under the trademark “PageFlex” by BitstreamInc. or Cambridge Mass.

Likewise the technology for producing images which containsteganographic information in the form of digital watermarks is welldeveloped. For example see U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,292, U.S. Pat. No.5,748,783 or the “Communications of the ACM” published July 1998 Vol.41. No. 7 pages 31 to 77. Commercial products which can store and readdigital watermarks are also widely available. Examples of such productsinclude “Adobe PhotoShop” Versions 4.0 and 5.0 and “Adobe ImageReady”Version 1.0 which are marketed by Adobe Corporation, “CorelDRAW”Versions 7 and 8, and “Corel PHOTO-PAINT” Versions 7 and 8 which aremarketed by Corel Corporation, and Micrografx Webtricity” Versions 1 and2, “Micrografx Graphics Suite 2”, and “Micrografx Picture Publisher”Versions 7 and 8 which are marketed by Micrografx Corporation.

Security documents such as passports and drivers licenses havetraditionally contained both images and printed text. However, theimages and the text in such documents are generally prepared in separateprocesses and merely merged at a final step in the overall production.

The present invention is directed to an improved security document whichhas several correlated multi-level self validating features. The presentinvention is also directed to an improved overall method and system forproducing security documents and to automatic authentication systems forsuch documents. With the present invention the document contains anumber of different kinds of information that is hidden from normal viewand which can be correlated to validate the document. The validation canbe done entirely automatically decreasing the need for humanintervention.

With the prior art systems, a human being such as an immigration officermust examine a passport to determine if the person presenting thedocument is the rightful owner of the document. With the presentinvention, the authentication can be done entirely automatically,leaving the human operator free to handle non-routine situations.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides security documents which has multiplefields or areas each of which contains information that is perceptiblein more than one way. For example, one field can contain a visuallyperceptible image and a digital watermark that can be detected when theimage is scanned and processed, another field can contain machinereadable OCR text that can be read by both a human and by a programmedcomputer, and still another field can contain watermark data which canbe correlated to the output of a fingerprint reader or apparatus whichscans a user's iris.

Documents in accordance with the present invention are produced by asystem and method which begins with a template which defines theplacements of elements on the document and the interrelationshipsbetween hidden and visual information on the document. That is, thetemplate specifies the placement of elements such as images,photographs, and text and it also specifies the interrelationshipbetween information that is visually perceptible to a user of thedocument and information that is hidden (not perceptible to a user) bymeans of digital watermarks. Different hidden digital watermark data isincluded in multiple elements of the document. The watermarks in thedifferent graphic elements of the document are correlated to each otherand correlated to the visual material on the document. In this way thedocument can not be forged by replacing one element (such as a picture)with a similar element from another document. In order to produce adocument defined by a particular template, appropriate pictures,graphics and digital data are extracted from a data bank, and watermarkdata is embedded in the pictures and graphics as appropriate. The mergeddigital data is then sent to a printing engine and the final document isproduced.

An automatic validation system of the present invention reads multiplefields on the document, and it also automatically detects informationabout the user. The various information is correlated to validate thedocument.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a security document in accordance with the presentinvention.

FIG. 2 is an overall diagram of a preferred embodiment of a system toproduce security documents in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a document validation system that operates inaccordance with the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

A diagram of a security document in accordance with the presentinvention is shown in FIG. 1. The security features on the document area pre-printed background 11 which 11 has an image or pattern (notvisible in FIG. 1) which contains a digital watermark. The image inbackground 11 may contains lines the width of which are varied to carrya watermark in accordance with the technique described in co-pendingapplication Ser. No. 09/074,034 filed May 6, 1998 (now U.S. Pat. No.6,449,377), the disclosure of which in incorporated herein in itsentirety.

The document also contains a photograph 12 which shows the owner of thedocument. This photograph 12 contains a watermark such as that describedin U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,886 which will issue Nov. 24, 1998. Thepersonalized background 14 can for example be a background image whichcorresponds to the image 12. While the personalized image 14 correspondsto the photograph 12, in area 14 the image is printed as a backgroundimage. Background images of various types are conventional, for examplepersonal checks frequently have background images of animals, mountains,etc. The background text makes it hard to change the human readable text15 which is printed over the background text. The bottom of the documenthas machine readable OCR-B text 16 and a Bar code 17.

It should be clearly understood that the document shown in FIG. 1 ismerely illustrative of the various elements that can be combined to forma security document. The exact layout can vary depending upon the needsof the particular application. If desired for a particular application,the document can be much more complex than the document shown in FIG. 1.The document can have many more fields and elements than does thedocument shown in FIG. 1. Furthermore the document could contain thevarious other known technology for preventing counterfeiting such asspecial paper and special ink.

Document shown in FIG. 1 can for example be a document such as adriver's license in which case the picture 12 would be a picture of theowner of the license. Graphic image 11 could for example be a stateseal. The text 15 could for example include the driver's license number,the owner's age, and the owner's address.

Document 10 can be a passport. In a passport, the hidden digitalwatermark data in picture 12 and in the other fields could becoordinated as follows:

Watermark contains Correlates to Pre-printed unique document background11 “batch” number Photo 12: Batch number and passport OCR-B version ofpassport number number, Human readable (cryptographically encoded)passport number, Master document Personalized “hash” of fingerprintfingerprint of the background 14 holder which is automatically read Barcode 17 Passport number Watermark in photo 12 (in code not in watermark)OCR-B text 16 Passport number Info in photo 12, Batch number background11 (in text not in watermark) And Bar code 17

An important point is that the various elements of hidden and visualinformation are coordinated in such a manner that the document is selfauthenticating. The hidden data in one field can be correlated with thehidden data in another field to insure that the document has not beenaltered.

If for example one tried to alter a document by replacing picture 12with a different picture, the new picture would either contain no hiddendata, or if it were a picture taken from a different document, thenumbers stored in the picture would not match the printed information intext field 15.

If the picture from one document were substituted for the picture in asecond document, the cryptographically encoded serial numbers could beused to determine the origin of the picture. It is noted that while inthe example shown above, both the Batch number and passport number arecryptographically encoded, other numbers such as a serial number or anID number could also be encoded in a special manner.

FIG. 2 shows an overall diagram of a system for producing document 10.The system includes a number of units, the operation of which iscontrolled and coordinated by a control computer 20. The followingexplanation will illustrate how the embodiment shown in FIG. 2 can beused to produce a document such as the document shown in FIG. 1.

A template 21 is used to define the overall characteristics of adocument. The characteristics specified by template 21, including thefields on the document, the data printed in any text fields and thewatermarks included in each image included on the document.

The template 21 is used by document layout device 26 to layout aparticular document for production. Data which is to be included in thewatermarks in any image field are stored in Watermark data store 22. Anypictures, text data, and Graphics are stored in units 23, 24 and 25respectively.

The document layout from unit 26, the digital watermark data from unit22 and the pictures, text data and graphics from units 23, 24, and 25are sent to Merging and watermarking unit 27. Unit 27 applies watermarksto pictures and graphics as specified by the layout information fromunit 11. Application of the watermarks to the pictures and graphics canbe done in a conventional manner; however, prior to sending thewatermark payload (i.e. the data stored in the watermark) to thewatermarking engine, the data can be passed through a conventionalencryption program. Encrypting the payload data provides an addedassurance that a counterfeiter could not make a counterfeit document.The level of encryption could be any level appropriate tot he value ofthe document.

The output from the Merging and watermarking unit 27 is then sent to aconventional printing engine 28 which produces a final document 10.Watermark Data storage 22, picture storage 23, digital data storage 24and graphics storage 25 can be conventional data storage servers.Physically they could all be provided by one physical storage unit.Template input unit 21 is a conventional interactive terminal orpersonal computer with a graphic design program. Merging andwatermarking unit 27 can be a conventional watermarking engine.

The system shown in FIG. 2 produces various parts of the securitydocument in a single step, thereby making it much harder to replace oneelement on a security document with a similar element from anotherdocument.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a document self authentication unit in accordancewith the present invention. The system has three input units, each ofwhich is conventional and commercially available. The input units are amagnetic stripe reader 301, a high resolution image scanner 302, and afingerprint reader 303. The document 10, shown in FIG. 1 does notinclude a magnetic stripe, but one of the alternatives for such adocument is to include a magnetic stripe.

The output from scanner 302 goes to three units (that is, to threecomputer programs) 305, 307 and 311. Alternatively, the bar code reader305 could be a separate unit which directly reads the bar code andprovides information to comparison and authentication unit 312.

If the bar code reader 305 is a computer program which receivesinformation from the output of scanner 302, the program 305 will readthe bar code 17. OCR program 307 reads the text 15 and the text 16 andwatermark detector 311 reads the watermarks in images 11, 12 and 14.

An authentication and comparison unit 312 compares the data from units301, 303, 305, 307 and 311 to determine if the data matches. If the datain some of the watermarks is encrypted, the comparison andauthentication unit 312 would include an appropriate decryption program.The decryption program in unit 312 could obtain the decryption key fromremote data base 314 in response to the number read by one of thedevices. Alternatively, the encrypted data could be automatically sentto a central facility for decryption. The unit 312 can also access aremote data base 314 to determine if there is any special handling thatis required for the document that has been presented. For example database 314 could contain information about passports that have beencancelled for various reasons. The resulting information is displayed ona display unit 320.

1. A physical object comprising: a first hidden digital watermarkcarried thereon, the first hidden digital watermark comprising a firstplural-bit message representing at least a reduced-bit representation ofa biometric corresponding to an authorized bearer of the physicalobject; and semantic information carried thereon, wherein at least aportion of the semantic information corresponds to the authorized bearerof the physical object.
 2. The object of claim 1 wherein the biometricrepresents a fingerprint.
 3. The object of claim 1 wherein the biometricrepresents an iris.
 4. The object of claim 1 further comprising aphotographic representation of the authorized bearer of the object. 5.The object of claim 1 further comprising a second, different hiddendigital watermark thereon, wherein the second, different hidden digitalwatermark comprises a second plural-bit message that corresponds to oris redundant with at least one of the semantic information and the firstplural-bit message.
 6. The object of claim 1 wherein the objectcomprises at least one of a photo identification document, a passport, adriver's license and a credit card.
 7. The object of claim 1 whereinfirst hidden digital watermark is machine-readable via visible lightscanning.
 8. The object of claim 1 wherein the first hidden digitalwatermark is represented through alterations of data representinggraphics or images.
 9. The object of claim 1 wherein the firstplural-bit message is encrypted.
 10. The object of claim 1 wherein thereduced-bit representation of a biometric comprises a hash.
 11. Anapparatus to authentic a physical object, the physical object comprisinga first hidden digital watermark including a first plural-bit messagerepresenting at least a first reduced-bit representation of a biometric,and semantic information carried thereon, said apparatus comprising: adigital watermark reader to read the first hidden digital watermark toobtain the first reduced-bit representation of the biometric from themessage; a comparator to compare data representing a sampled biometricwith the first reduced-bit representation; and an output to displayinformation corresponding to a comparison of the comparator.
 12. Theapparatus of claim 11 wherein said comparator generates a reduced-bitrepresentation of the sampled biometric, and compares the generated,reduced-bit representation of the sampled biometric to the firstreduced-bit representation.
 13. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein thebiometric represents a fingerprint.
 14. The apparatus of claim 11wherein the biometric represents an iris.
 15. The apparatus of claim 11wherein the physical object further comprises a photographicrepresentation of an authorized bearer of the object.
 16. The apparatusof claim 11, wherein the physical object further comprises a second,different hidden digital watermark thereon, and wherein the second,different hidden digital watermark comprises a second plural-bit messagethat corresponds to or is redundant with at least one of the semanticinformation or the first plural-bit message.
 17. The apparatus of claim16 wherein said digital watermark reader reads the second hidden digitalwatermark to obtain the second plural-bit message.
 18. The apparatus ofclaim 11 wherein the physical object comprises at least one of apassport, a driver's license and a credit card.
 19. The apparatus ofclaim 11 wherein first hidden digital watermark is machine-readable fromdata generated by visible, light scanning.
 20. The apparatus of claim 11wherein the first hidden digital watermark is represented throughalterations to data representing graphics or images on the physicalobject.